Chamber and committees

That leads on to my second question. Do you accept comments made to the committee during the workshops that ring fencing can be a bit of an issue? It was largely participants from local government who said that. They commented that there was almost too much ring fencing and that they would like the autonomy to spend some money on areas of policy where they knew that there had been good effects. That was not to do with economic statistics and much more to do with social wellbeing. Do you accept those points?

The participants also pointed out that that approach is better for ownership, because people in that community feel that they have devised the policies that are working. That is successful in getting people to understand them better and in getting them well motivated to deliver them. I thought that that was quite a strong point.

Is the feedback from people who are outwith the building relatively positive?

Following on from Mr Mason’s point, I think it is important for us to be able to scrutinise multi-year projects. Obviously, we have to look at things on a yearly basis, but the forecasting for projections is important to the scrutiny of this committee, so any information that we could possibly have at the time of the internal audit would be immensely helpful to the committee.

The second thing I want to ask about is also in the Presiding Officer’s letter. She says that the investment has achieved certain things, and that the website is

“more resilient, stable, flexible, and robust”,

although we have heard varying views on that. She also says that it has reduced the possibility of a really awful cyberattack, which, as public bodies, we all have to accept can happen. We saw what happened to SEPA recently and how it made life very difficult for at least two Parliament committees—the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee and the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee in the previous parliamentary session—which had implications for the work that the Parliament could do. I am not asking you to give away any state secrets, but why are we confident that the possibility of a cyberattack has been addressed by the new system? It is a very important point. If we were to have a cyberattack, it could cause huge problems.

I will explore two themes, the first of which is based on some comments that were made to the committee last week. I cannot give names, because it was a private session, but the meeting included some very senior officials in local government and the third sector. They all agreed that the national performance framework is a good thing in principle, but when they discussed its workability, they used adjectives such as “ethereal”, “anodyne”, “top-heavy” and “theoretical” to describe it. A couple of people added that they did not feel that the national performance framework was necessary, because, if they were doing their job properly, they should be already be doing the things that it sets out. I thought that that was quite an interesting reflection from people in local government who are on the front line of putting a lot of policies into practice. We were talking particularly about improvements in addressing child poverty in Dundee. How do you respond to that?

That picks up on a comment that Dr Elliott made about the Christie commission principles. If we are to get better outcomes and better wellbeing, should we be doing that through local initiatives—local people know best what works well in their local community—rather than having this big “scaffolding”, as Ms Wallace described it. There is a dilemma: there is too much at the general, national framework level, when what we really want are things that work very well locally. Could you give us your reflections on that?

I will pick up on that point. Can that be localised? I ask that because participants in a couple of the groups at last week’s workshops were very clear that they wanted more local autonomy to decide what the best thing was for wellbeing in their area.

Thank you.

On that point, I draw the panel’s attention to the letter that the committee received from the Presiding Officer, in which she said:

“Officials have also recognised the need to provide increased detail on major multi-year project costs as part of the annual budgeting process”.

She goes on to say that the committee should note that, because it is one of the Parliament’s larger investments,

“the project is scheduled to be reviewed as part of our internal audit programme.”

When is that audit due? Can you confirm that its results will be passed to this committee?

Thank you. That is very helpful and encouraging.

My final point comes back to what the Presiding Officer said—you have alluded to this already—about one of the reasons for the redesign being to ensure that the website is more accessible and user friendly for members of the public and people who are outside this building. What are we doing to measure the responses of those stakeholders so that we know that what we have done is helping people to understand this place a bit better and to contribute to it?

My final point is about the relationship between Government and civil service. Permanent secretary, you have good knowledge of the Westminster situation and will be well aware that there were issues with that relationship down south. Had it not been for Covid, there would have been further investigation into the relationship, which is critical.

In Scotland, there are now question marks over the relationship between Government and civil service. As you know, a few weeks ago, a senior civil servant was sent out to the media to bat on behalf of Scottish Government ministers about a particular issue. That puts into question whose job it is to defend or, in some cases, promote particular Government policies. Is it appropriate for a senior civil servant to be sent out to the media, as was the case for Professor Jason Leitch, to defend a particular decision in which there is a question mark over a ministerial action?